duke sucks: a completely evenhanded, unbiased investigation into

the most evil team on planet earth. Copyright © 2012 by Reed Tucker
and Andy Bagwell. Foreword © 2012 by Ian Williams. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s
Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tucker, Reed.
Duke sucks : a completely evenhanded, unbiased investigation into the
most evil team on planet earth / Reed Tucker and Andy Bagwell.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-250-00463-5 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-250-00819-0 (e-book)
1. Duke Blue Devils (Basketball team)—Humor. 2. Duke University—
Basketball—Humor. I. Bagwell, Andy. II. Title.
GV885.43.D85T83 2012
796.323'6309756563—dc23
2011038063

First Edition: February 2012

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Charge #1
duke is dirtier than a bus
station bathroom floor.

I know for a fact that that was not by accident.”

That’s UNC guard Dewey Burke’s take on one of the most
infamous plays in Duke basketball history. March 4, 2007. Cha-
pel Hill, North Carolina. With 14.5 seconds left in an eventual
86–72 UNC victory, Carolina’s Tyler Hansbrough retrieves his
own miss from the foul line and goes up for a putback. Suddenly,
Duke’s Gerald Henderson comes swooping in from behind and
smashes his elbow into Hansbrough’s face, breaking the star play-
er’s nose and sending blood gushing down his mug, across his
uniform, and onto the floor.
“I can’t tell you how I know that or details, but I know that
was not an accident,” says Burke, who was on the court during
the play and held Hansbrough back from charging Henderson.
“That was supposed to happen. I don’t think they were trying to
break Tyler’s nose or wanted him to bleed like that, but they
were trying to send some sort of message of, ‘We’re not going out
like this.’ ”
Everyone involved, including both coaches, claimed in the
postgame press conference that the elbow was an accident. (Though
Coach K would snidely suggest that it was partially UNC coach
Roy Williams’s fault for leaving his starters on the floor so late in
the game.)
“But look, we were gonna take the high road and say, ‘Hey,
we knew it wasn’t on purpose, and we’re moving on,’ ” Burke
DUKE SUCKS

says. “But all of us in the program knew there was a lot more to
it than that.”
Dirty is a tough thing to prove. One man’s “hard foul” is
another man’s “assault and battery.” Anyone who’s hooped on
the playgrounds is familiar with the “no blood, no foul” rule,
but Duke seems to take it a bit too literally sometimes.
While no one can prove that Duke is out to play dirty basket-
ball, the trail of blood, bruises, and broken bones the team has
left in its wake would seem to speak for itself.
There will be blood, all right. Lots of blood. So much blood
that a game will look like an episode of CSI: Durham.
Let’s go back a few decades and peer deep into the history of
Duke dirtiness, all the way back to the 1930s, shortly after the
school became Duke University.
“Duke was preparing to play North Carolina. Concerned
with UNC’s big center ‘Tiny’ Harper, Bill Werber and Harry
Councillor practiced throwing a ball at the head of Duke center
Joe Crosson, who would duck as the ball approached him,” Jim
Sumner wrote in his book, Tales from the Duke Blue Devils Hard-
wood. “At the beginning of the game with UNC, Werber fired a
ball at Crosson’s head. He ducked and the ball hit Harper flush
in the face, temporarily stunning him. The big man was strangely
passive the rest of the game.”
The actual douche bag was invented in 1848 but we’re pretty
sure this incident is the first time a human acted like one.
Flash forward to February 4, 1961. The incident known as
“The Fight” also involves a game with North Carolina. After
UNC’s Larry Brown is fouled unnecessarily hard by Duke’s Art
Heyman, Brown takes offense and suddenly punches are being

6
 Charge #1

wildly thrown. A near riot follows as the UNC bench clears and
Duke fans join the mob.
Notice something there? Seems to us that the Duke guy was
the instigator. And, yes, this is the same Larry Brown who has
since gone on to coach in the ABA as well as every team in the
NBA. Twice.
Next up is a matchup in the Coach K era that will be forever
known as “The Bloody Montross Game.” Duke is coming off a
national title and rolls into Chapel Hill on February 5, 1992, as
the number one team in the country. During a hard-fought game
battling down low, UNC center Eric Montross gets bashed and a
gigantic cut opens on his noggin. He steps to the foul line toward

Pieces of Laettner’s elbow still show up in Eric Montross’s X-ray.

(Courtesy of Scott Williams)

7
DUKE SUCKS

the end of the game with blood running down his cheek and the
side of his head. Carolina ultimately wins the game 75–73.
Montross says that he still gets asked about that game more
than any other. We attended that game and will admit that maybe
a few tears of joy were shed in the stands. And later that night, a
mob formed on Franklin Street, and Montross came strolling
down the street, a fresh bandage under his left eye.
Not even two months later in March 1992, came the infamous
Christian Laettner “Stomp.” No blood, but still dirty.
When you get to 2003 and talk about Dahntay (or should
we say “Dirtay”) Jones, how can you pick one incident? Let’s see,
there’s January 12, 2003, when he broke Wake Forest freshman
Justin Gray’s jaw setting a screen. Then roughly two months later,
he swung an elbow and cut UNC freshman Raymond Felton on
the chin. (No foul was called on that, by the way.) That ruckus
led to a heated exchange between then-coach Matt Doherty and
Duke assistant coach Chris Collins that almost caused punches
to be thrown.
And “Dirtay” didn’t clean up once he got to the pros. Any
Phoenix Suns fans out there? Then you’ll remember May 2, 2005,
when he nearly tackled Shawn Marion during a transition layup
attempt in the playoffs. Marion’s teammate Quentin Richardson
told the Arizona Republic after the game, “I didn’t like it. If we were
somewhere else, there would’ve been a fight. If this were the regu-
lar season, [Jones] would’ve been in the front row. He would’ve
been somewhere, and I would’ve been on top of him. That [stuff ]
is unnecessary, and it’s not basketball.”
In 2009, Jones was nearly suspended from the NBA playoffs
after a flagrant foul on Kobe Bryant—his third flagrant of the
postseason and his second in two games. Lakers coach Phil Jack-

8
 Charge #1

son accused Jones of “unacceptable defense, tripping guys, and

playing unsportsmanlike basketball.”
On February 20, 2005, Duke was coming off a two-game
losing streak when they hosted the Wake Forest Demon Deacons
for a Top 20 battle. Coach K mysteriously shook up the starting
lineup and put in little-used reserve Patrick Davidson. His orders?
Basically to harass the bejeezus out of star Deacon guard, Chris
Paul.
“He manhandled Wake Forest guard Chris Paul on the open-
ing possession, bumping him wildly before a foul was called,” the
Associated Press wrote. “He left the game after two minutes to a
rousing ovation and got a warm embrace from Blue Devils coach
Mike Krzyzewski.”
Patrick finished the game with a stat line of two minutes played,
two personal fouls, thirteen slaps on the ass from his teammates,
and one creepy hug. Oh, and after the season he added something
else: the Coach’s Award, Duke’s trophy for the person who personi-
fies the team’s values.
Not that dirty play always involves blood. Consider this price-
less anecdote from UNC guard Bobby Frasor.
Years ago as an eighth grader, Frasor was attending a basketball
summer camp.
“Before camp would start all the campers would play. And in
8th grade I was pretty good so I played with some of the older
guys,” he says. “We were playing against [current Duke assistant
coaches] Chris Collins and Steve Wojciechowski. And I’m tying
my shoe getting ready to play and Wojo throws it into Collins
and he goes up for a layup. At the time I didn’t think about, but
looking back on it, well, that’s Duke.”
Damn straight.

9
DUKE SUCKS

Verdict: What have we got? A stunned center, a near riot, a

bleeding face during a free throw, a foot to the chest of a man
lying on the ground, a broken jaw, a cut chin, pissed-off pros,
two fouls and a creepy hug, a cheap play, and the bloody nose to
end all bloody noses. That’s enough evidence to keep CSI forensic
investigators busy for years.

10
 Charge #2
the annoying, pointless
floor slap.

D uke may not have invented the floor slap—that useless, hor-
ribly juvenile gesture in which the players hunker down way low
and smack the court to show everyone that they mean business—
but, like the CIA with waterboarding, they sure as hell did it most
annoyingly.
If only the floor could slap back.
No one’s quite sure who invented the gesture, but what is
certain is that it was brought to Duke by Coach K during his
initial season in 1980. It was road-tested by that first team that
included Gene Banks, Kenny Dennard, and Vince Taylor. Two
years later, it was adopted by Jay Bilas, Johnny Dawkins, and the
rest of the Blue Devils, who heartily pounded their way to a 3–11
conference record.
Since then, the floor slap has been deployed so many times
by so many players during so many games—both important and
inconsequential—that it has become a Duke signature. Ask any-
one to free-associate three things that they know about Duke
and this, along with lacrosse rape, will probably make the list.
“It’s not like it’s on page thirty-seven of a guidebook we
hand everybody: When to floor-slap,” assistant coach Steve
Wojciechowski, told Sports Illustrated back in 2005.
Except that it is. The floor slap is something that Coach K
actively teaches. It’s behavior that is not spontaneous and organic,
DUKE SUCKS

like instructing a child to ride a bike or teaching William Avery

how to do math. It is learned, and that’s why it’s so damn annoying.
The move grew out of something Coach K taught in practice,
and he occasionally signaled from the bench during games that
he wanted his boys to bend over and smack away.
“It was K’s way of showing us that if we did what he said we
would own the defensive floor, that no one would get by us,”
Mark Alarie said in Tales from the Duke Blue Devils Hardwood.
No one would argue that emotion isn’t a part of basketball.
During the heat of the game, plenty of things happen spontane-
ously. Players pump their fists, they shout, they pat their team-
mate’s ass inappropriately. All good.
But Duke’s floor slap has become so calculated, such a vain,
look-at-me gesture that it long ago ceased to have any meaning.
You do anything enough times—be it fly to the moon, have sex
with Kim Kardashian, or slap Coach K’s court— and it’s bound
to become less special.
In his book Blue Blood: Duke-Carolina: Inside the Most Sto-
ried Rivalry in College Hoops, Art Chansky reports that during
the 1988 season, Coach K actually had to order his players to
rein in the endless floor slapping. “They would just do it and play
our regular defense,” Coach K said. Instead of “regular” defense,
Coach K then barked that his team should start playing some
“fucking defense.” Whether that brand requires floor slapping is
unclear.
What is clear: The floor slap is just plain stupid. It’s beyond
meaningless. It should be outlawed, and violators should be pun-
ished by having to actually drive a nonluxury automobile.
The floor slap is one of those things that is pounded into the
head of every Duke player until it becomes habitual, unquestioned

12
 Charge #2

behavior. It’s no different from a brainwashed cult member wear-

ing purple Nikes or shaving his head and shaking a tambourine
at a bus station.
Don’t think so? Just ask Jamal Boykin.
The forward, who played at Duke from 2005 to 2007, was so
eager to gain admission into the cult of Duke and all its required
behaviors that he completely drank the floor-slapping Kool-Aid.
He is probably the first dumb-ass in the history of the world
to slap the floor during the 2006 annual Blue-White game. Yes,
during a scrimmage. Against his own team. Th at’s sort of like
making a throat-slitting gesture after you’ve just blocked the shot
of the fat kid from Modern Family during a celebrity charity
game.
A few weeks later, Boykin again got so fired up that he broke
out the floor slap during the first game of his career. Only prob-
lem was, Duke was up by 40 points on lowly Columbia at the
time. (The Blue Devils went on to win 86– 43.)
“It was to the point that it was disrespectful to the other
team,” Boykin later said.
Ya think?
And the most embarrassing part of it all was that Boykin was
hardly a difference maker. This was not a baller who was putting
up double-doubles and carrying the team. Boykin scored four
points in that Columbia game, which wound up being his only
points of the entire season. He transferred to Cal a year later.
When the Bulls’ Michael Jordan talks trash, you humbly ac-
cept it and ask for more, if-you-would-be-so-kind, sir. When the
Bulls’ Will Perdue does it, you almost feel sorry for the guy.
And it’s not like the floor slap is always an effective, cohesive
force for good. It can sometimes backfire, as it did in a big way

13
DUKE SUCKS

back in 2008 when West Virginia met the Blue Devils in the
second round of the NCAA tournament.
Duke got manhandled by the Mountaineers 73– 67, marking
the team’s second straight pre– Sweet Sixteen flameout. Toward
the end of the game, WVA guard Joe Mazzulla, who had thirteen
points, eleven rebounds, and eight assists, threw Duke’s tradition
right back in their face and mockingly smacked the floor.
Teammate Joe Alexander would later tell Yahoo! Sports, “Man,
Joe Mazzulla slapping the floor—that was just such a great thing
to happen in my life.”
You don’t suppose that Mazzulla and the rest of the team
took Duke’s floor-slapping tradition as a personal slap in their
face? You don’t suppose they used it as motivation, do you?
There’s a reason not a single other college program has a
similar tradition. Slapping the floor is pathetic. It’s nothing more
than a taunt from a team too elitist to talk trash. Real teams speak
with their game, not with their clownish gestures.
Verdict: Guilty. Time to leave the damn floor alone.

14